Black Friday Madness Madness
Two people were killed by gunplay at a California Toys R Us yesterday, joining the trampled Wal-Mart worker in New York. Naturally, this is bringing out condemnations of America's crazy appetite for stuff. Mark Silva: Lay a little blame at the feet of the government, for exhorting Americans to spend more money and shake off that recession gripping the nation. Lay some ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 29, 2008 08:18
Mahdi Army Transforming into Salvation Army?
The Mahdi Army might soon be the Iraqi equivalent of the Salvation Army, Gina Chon reports for the Wall Street Journal. Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- long a thorn in the side of the U.S. military and Iraqi government -- intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization. The transformation would represent a significant turnabout ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 5, 2008 12:14
Heller Denied D.C. Gun Permit
Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned Washington, D.C.'s 32-year-old ban on handguns and established that the 2nd Amendment provided an individual right to own guns, was denied a handgun permit by the District yesterday. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit. But when he tried to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 18, 2008 05:34
D.C. Bans Guns with Red Tape
The District of Columbia has made it legal for residents to own a handgun after being so ordered by the United States Supreme Court. But they're not making it easy. The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Washington's strict 32-year-old handgun ban was among the first to arrive as the city started registering firearms. Dick Heller showed up early ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 17, 2008 11:51
Obama’s Surge Purge Emerges, Demonstrates Nerve, Verges on Scourge, Reactions Diverge
Barack Obama has taken things off his campaign site that might be used by opponents to embarrass him, James Gordon Meek reports in the NY Daily News under the headline "Obama Purges Web Critique of Surge." Why, it's our Outrage of the Day! Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 15, 2008 12:27
Zoning Away the Constitution
Matt Yglesias points out that, the Supreme Court's historic ruling in Heller notwithstanding, DC residents still have no effective 2nd Amendment rights. As Rob Goodspeed explains it's all in the zoning. You can't legally buy a gun in DC because there are no gun stores here. And to sell a gun to an out-of-state resident, a gun shop needs to actually ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 14, 2008 12:36
Obama Plunges in Newsweek Poll!
Newsweek has released a new poll and is excited by the huge change: "Glow Fading? The latest NEWSWEEK Poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 3 points. What a difference a few weeks can make." This is quite amusing in that pretty much everyone agreed that the June 20th Newsweek poll was an outlier. No matter. In ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 12, 2008 06:56
More Language and Culture, Fewer Guns
Apropos our value of foreign languages discussion earlier, Andrew Krepinevich, a highly regarded military analyst, says the Pentagon needs to commit far more resources to just that. "If the experience of the last seventeen years tells us anything, it is that we are likely to continue to find our armed forces deployed... in operations among the indigenous populations, rather than around ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 9, 2008 15:33
Appalachian Election?
Steve Tuttle takes to the pages of Newsweek to proclaim the ascendency of Appalachia as the decider of the next president. "Hick." "Hillbilly." "Redneck." "Inbred." "Cracker." "Ridge Runner." I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the '80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 30, 2008 09:20
Gun Control Irony Alert
Under the provocative headline "The Thugs Win the Case," WaPo columnist Colbert King sniffs of the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday in Heller, There's one group of District residents absolutely unfazed by today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling shooting down the District's strict handgun ban: the dudes who have been blowing away their fellow citizens with abandon since the law was put on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 27, 2008 07:12
